Growing up on the Rez versus out here, in this un-Indian landscape;
it’s more than a paradigm shift, it’s not even close. There’s an
undercurrent of competition like some kind of school yard push and shove
that goes on in our social media circles that we all talk about but not
as openly as we should.

If we are going to go forward in positive ways for our Nations we
can’t do it fighting with each other in the backseat of the bus. It’s
almost something you can’t pin down or address directly because the
ground shifts so easily when you’re talking about rumors and salacious
gossip. Slippery and without accountability, we see keyboard warriors
accusing each other instead of lifting each other. If my Kunsi was still
here I could sit and talk with her about all these things that go on
and she would laugh about a lot of it. She loved to laugh and gossip
too, but she would also talk about where the line is drawn or where it
should be. She used to tell me the big stories were who got in trouble
at the Indian School, who got pregnant on the side, who was leaving the
Rez forever because they got their heart broken. She left Coeur d’Alene
Rez forever with a heartbreak like that, her man was dead and she had a
baby on the way to raise alone. Some hearts don’t recover, some people
don’t just bounce back after that type of loss. The talk then wasn’t
what it is now. Then it was Pow Wow gossip, harmless talk over coffee at
the kitchen table at night because she and my Aunts always seemed to
have a fresh pot going. She called it camp talk since so much of their
time to catch up was at deer or fish camp. Especially among the women
within our families that’s a hard-wired part of our culture; laughing
sideways and Oh is it? until the Sun comes up. But what a leap we have
made from that tiny kitchen packed with my Grandmother’s sisters, to the
cyber bullying we see now on Twitter, Face Book, Instagram and others.
It’s not about hurt feelings at this level; it’s about the black eye it
gives what we are trying to do here. There is finally a momentum that I
have been excited to watch building up over the last five years among
our Nations; for pride in who we are and what it means to be Native at a
time when the World needs a strong voice for the environment, for what
is right, and for voicing what is wrong and what has to change. We have a
chance to do good and to help ourselves and yet for each accomplishment
there is a sustained and stinging loss of leadership in our communities
because in real talk, people get tired of the constant negativity, the
back-biting. When you’re dealing with social media you’re in a whole
other country. We tend to take on the organizations we see as defamatory
to Indian Country, and from the other side of our faces we smirk and
spread gossip about those of us who are doing positive things for our
People as a whole.

One of the most common attacks in social media of Natives on other
Skins is the one I call “Native-r Than You”. We all know what this is,
we see it played out continually on Twitter. The one-up on everything
from if you grew up Rez or not, if not why not, if you speak your
language or languages fluently, and how many first cousins you have, to
the ultimate throw down; how much blood you have. I’ve been through this
more times than I can count at this point. I have joked about printing
up a genealogy flier to keep in my war pony glovebox. Makes it easier;
just hand over the list of relatives, adjust the aviator shades and keep
driving. No other group has a more defensive posture as a whole than we
do when it comes to our past. It’s a cultural stimulus response
reaction stemming from several hundred years of racial profiling,
assimilation to survive, and de-assimilation to reconnect us to our
roots.

Of course blood is important. There’s no doubt that who we come from
gives us strength for where we find ourselves today. Our past is carried
forward in our blood. But Crazy Horse isn’t on Twitter. White Buffalo
Calf Woman isn’t on Face Book. Our blood and our prophets, our blood and
our ceremonies, our blood and our land, our blood and our children; our
blood and our unborn. Yes it matters where we came from but it should
never be the thing that stakes us to the ground. It should be what gives
us the fire inside to move forward as Red Nation People; not in
competition with each other, but hand in hand walking forward into a
future that our ancestors would be proud to see.